Lecture on the Weather (1975) consisted of 12 men reciting texts by Thoreau—most of the time at least two of them simultaneously. At no time were they all reciting. Most of the time they delivered the text in a conventional “lecture” tone. But frequently they would break into singing, sighing, coughing, laughing and other vocal effects. Each man also had a musical instrument, which they intermittently played. It went on for about a half hour.
That’s an inventory of the components. The people in the audience who found it insultingly stupid—and as if by magic, they were present last night, as inevitably happens—were absolutely correct. John Cage carefully crafted the occasion to fail to satisfy the need for spectacle, diversion, virtuosity, cleverness, identification, sympathy or any of the other needs and desires conventional concerts endeavor to satisfy.
Instead, there was an experience that was a bit like a concert, but more than a little like an ordeal from everyday life. But there is not only pain and boredom. Cage is usually careful to not cross the line from provocation into hostility.
And while the specific activities and the ways they are performed are pointless, the theatrical event is unabashedly didactic. Especially this Lecture. I would classify it as one of Cage’s music theater parables.
My experience of it fell into three acts:
The first act, when the men began speaking, was bewildering cacophony. It was impossible not to take it as a bitter parody of political debate. All these men—twelve of them, like jurors, apostles, tones, or what have you—orating and grunting and tootling on toy flutes, none of them paying the slightest attention to each other. What could be more familiar? It's not even symbolic, but dumb reality. On one hand, it’s what we get served every time we look at the news. On the other hand, it’s like standing in line at Trader Joe’s while everyone conducts his or her immensely important private/public cell phone conversation.
It was emphasized by the Prologue, delivered as a monologue, in which Cage in his own voice denounces the failure of politicians, circa 1975, to put aside their games and deal effectively with unemployment, energy, pollution, and financial crises. So much for progress.
After fifteen minutes, I stopped being aware of what they were saying, and began hearing the waves of babel as inarticulate noise, i.e. music. This was Act 2. The satire has shifted in tone from savagery to bemusement. The torrent of unintelligible speechifying became a harmless pleasure. I thought of Homer’s funny/sad description of the old men of Troy, retired from fighting but not from murmuring, in voices that are cicada-like.
But this idyllic interlude didn’t last long. Another component of Lecture, an audiotape recording of a thunderstorm began filling Zipper Hall with terrific echoing rumbles. With this accompaniment, Act 3 begins and the talking takes on a more sinister tone. As the thunder pealed, the chatter of the men became a demonstration of the ugliness, silliness and impotence of humanity in comparison to the beauty, seriousness and power of nature.
The fact that the words they were speaking—intermittently intelligible—were wise, amusing and poetic only made the situation more tragic. Cage in effect was demonstrating the ultimate irrelevance of even the most brilliant eloquence and insight. In Cage's beloved Finnegans Wake, the periodic blasts of thunder signal new eras and rebirth, but not here.
But after the storm, the calm. After intermission, an ensemble of 17 students from Hamilton High joined 6 veterans from the Southwest Chamber Music to play Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 parts: Twelve Haiku followed by a Recording of the Dawn at Stony Point, New York, August 6, 1974. A elaborate designation for two dozen or so brief, animated outbursts of instrumental color, separated by long pauses.
It was lovely, but complicated by the social situation. I could just imagine the feelings of the unprepared parents in the audience and their kids on stage. This kind of confrontation is also part of Cage’s work.
And then everyone stopped playing, and sat on stage for 15 minutes—or it might have been longer—listening to an audio tape. It seemed to be a straightforward capturing of a middling quiet country spot. You can hear roosters crowing in the distance, other birds chirping nearby, and in the distance, the quiet rumble of trucks accelerating. Occasionally there’s a rustle of the microphone brushing against something.
Again, investing time in it is the key. After you pass the initial sense of “That’s all?” you start to relish how lovely it is.
You start to imagine the landscape: not pristine nature to be sure, but somehow the traffic is not utterly alien. Everything has its place. It is a vision of humanity and nature in harmony; it’s a found Pastoral Symphony.
Another brilliant program by the courageous Southwest Chamber Music people.
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